The Ink Black Coronary heart by Robert Galbraith (Sphere, £25)
At 1,024 pages, the sixth outing for personal investigators Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott is the longest but, however though there are longueurs, this story of web pile-ons repays the dedication. Edie Ledwell, co-creator of standard YouTube cartoon The Ink Black Coronary heart, approaches the company hoping to find the id of her on-line persecutor, Anomie, however is turned away due to an already heavy workload. Shortly afterwards, Edie is discovered murdered in Highgate Cemetery in north London, along with her collaborator and former boyfriend mendacity critically wounded close by. He’s unable to call the assailant, however Anomie, who has invented a recreation based mostly on the cartoon, claims to be accountable. Strike and Ellacott try to unmask Anomie, getting into the sport and interacting with The Ink Black Coronary heart’s obsessive followers. This novel might definitely be seen as Galbraith AKA JK Rowling’s riposte to the therapy meted out to her on-line, however I believe it’s not a coincidence that it’s set in 2015, the time of the #Gamergate marketing campaign of misogynistic harassment which, as right here, included doxing, rape and dying threats, in addition to conspiracy theories. It is a cautionary story of the digital world’s affect on actual individuals’s lives.

The Skeleton Key by Erin Kelly (Hodder & Stoughton, £16.99)
A special sort of fandom is examined in Erin Kelly’s newest: armchair treasure hunters, corresponding to these obsessed over Package Williams’s 1979 puzzle story e book Masquerade. Right here, the inspiration is the equally profitable The Golden Bones, created by artist Frank Churcher: the story of murdered Elinore, whose bones, constructed from gold and treasured stones, are buried in websites throughout England. Now just one stays undiscovered. Churcher has grown in wealth and stature, whereas his household, who take pleasure in a bourgeois boho existence in Hampstead in London, have turn into more and more dysfunctional – and among the treasure hunters haven’t fared too effectively, both. The clan meet to rejoice the fiftieth anniversary of the e book’s publication, and a movie crew is available to make a documentary – however when the “large reveal” of the ultimate bone goes disastrously unsuitable, metaphorical skeletons start cascading out of cabinets. With wealthy characterisation and complex but propulsive plotting, Kelly is at her appreciable finest as she mercilessly fillets monstrous egos and poisonous relationships whereas ramping up the strain.

The Bullet That Missed by Richard Osman (Viking, £20)
The third e book within the bestselling Thursday Homicide Membership sequence sees the denizens of the upmarket Kentish retirement village embark on one other investigation. This time, former spy Elizabeth, retired nurse Joyce, psychiatrist Ibrahim and former commerce unionist Ron are wanting into the disappearance of Bethany Waites, 10 years earlier. Waites, a journalist who had been investigating a large VAT fraud, was presumed to have died when her automotive plunged off a cliff at Dover. The physique was by no means discovered however the circumstances had been suspicious, and because the pensioners start to research the chilly case turns into pink scorching. Kidnapping, blackmail and homicide ensue, however the quartet take all of it of their stride, simply as they do the vagaries of ageing. Heat, witty and – regardless of the physique depend – soothing as ever, that is peaceable studying for an autumn afternoon.

Typically Folks Die by Simon Stephenson (Borough, £14.99)
Returning to follow in 1999 after being suspended for stealing opioids, a younger Scottish physician takes a job on the solely place that’ll have him: St Luke’s, an understaffed, underfunded NHS hospital in London’s East Finish, which seems “like an asylum {that a} distracted little one had amended with half a dozen unmatched Lego units”. As he struggles to combat a bewildering array of ailments he’s solely examine in textbooks – dengue fever, scurvy, uncommon genetic syndromes – usually consulting through an interpreter, a rising variety of sudden affected person deaths create an environment of paranoia. The police bumble about ineffectually; one workers member after one other turns into the prime suspect; a colleague takes their very own life, and our unnamed narrator has a relapse … Written with an Adam Kay-style sardonic wit and interspersed with descriptions of the real-life careers of murderous medics, it’s definitely engrossing, though crime aficionados may want for a extra centered, much less picaresque plot.

Marple: Twelve New Tales by varied authors (HarperCollins, £20)
Though crime author Sophie Hannah has written novels that includes Hercule Poirot, that is the primary time the Agatha Christie property have allowed a reintroduction of Miss Marple, reimagined right here in a vastly fulfilling assortment of 12 new tales by feminine writers starting from Naomi Alderman and Jean Kwok to Dreda Say Mitchell and Leigh Bardugo. The spinster sleuth who, in Christie’s personal phrases, “anticipated the worst of everybody and all the things, and was, with nearly scary accuracy, often proved proper”, might be discovered fixing crimes in Manhattan (Alyssa Cole), the Amalfi coast (Elly Griffiths) and Cape Cod (Karen M McManus), in addition to on her house turf of St Mary Mead (Val McDermid and Ruth Ware) or the equally outwardly respectable Meon Maltravers (Lucy Foley). Some choices could also be extra within the golden age custom than others, however there’s sufficient beady, tweedy Marple ingenuity right here to fulfill essentially the most fastidious Christie fan.